Outdoors Society X Nocs Provision
Boots, Layers, Binoculars
On a Saturday morning just after sunrise, 25 hikers gathered on the edge of Auckland's West Coast with Outdoors Society — a New Zealand retail store & community that runs free group hikes for anyone who wants to get outside and meet people doing the same.
The usual kit was there: boots, layers, a chilly bin. Plus one addition we'd brought along — a briefcase full of Nocs. The plan was never to cover ground fast. It was to slow down and actually look at a coastline most of us drive past on the way to somewhere else.
One Simple Brief: Get Curious
The Waitākere Ranges sit about 45 minutes west of central Auckland, where native bush runs straight into black-sand beaches and cliffs that drop into the Tasman Sea. It's a seven-kilometre loop of rolling green hills, lookouts and open ocean. We paired everyone up — one set of Nocs binoculars between two, a phone adapter each — and gave them a simple brief: find something that catches your eye. A detail hidden in the bush. A rock formation holding its ground. A bird with no idea it was being watched. Get curious, experiment, see what you can uncover. Nobody was told what to look for. That was the point.
Curiosity Took Over
Conversation faded as curiosity took over — people balancing on one leg, crouched in the foliage, holding phones upside down in pursuit of a shot. Point a pair of binoculars at something ordinary and it stops being ordinary. Seven kilometres later we circled up for scroggin from Goodlids and electrolytes from NODE Hydration and passed phones around to see what everyone had found. We'd framed the morning as a photography competition, but there was never really a winning photo — the challenge was about noticing the things we usually walk straight by. Four competitive rounds of Heads or Tails sent two hikers home with their own pair of Nocs.
Watch What You See
Thanks to Outdoors Society crew for having us, and to Goodlids and NODE Hydration for keeping everyone fed and watered.
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